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This chapter presents an argument that, in the first two years of his regency, the duc d'Orléans made a conscious effort to win the friendship of the parlements and to make them his allies in his struggle with his rival, the duc du Maine. In an effort to win their affection, he cajoled, courted and occasionally capitulated to the very judges whom Louis XIV had tethered, a bid for cooperation that lay beneath the blandishments, inconsistencies and reversals which he showed in his treatment of the tribunals. But the grievances of the parlements, above all the disappointing inability of the...

This chapter presents an argument that, in the first two years of his regency, the duc d'Orléans made a conscious effort to win the friendship of the parlements and to make them his allies in his struggle with his rival, the duc du Maine. In an effort to win their affection, he cajoled, courted and occasionally capitulated to the very judges whom Louis XIV had tethered, a bid for cooperation that lay beneath the blandishments, inconsistencies and reversals which he showed in his treatment of the tribunals. But the grievances of the parlements, above all the disappointing inability of the Noailles administration to satisfy their financial claims, made it hard for such an alliance to take root. The duc de Saint-Simon condemned it as irresolute fawning, born of an exaggerated sense of the Parlement's importance. As of January 1718, Orléans had pulled back from his politics of accommodation.